1. Technical Field
The presently disclosed embodiments are directed to virtual repair of digital media.
2. Brief Discussion of Related Art
Digital information, such as audio and/or video information, is commonly distributed on low-cost digital media disks, such as compact disks (CDs), digital versatile disks (DVDs), BluRay disks, and the like. Typically, it is convenient and cost effective to distribute large volumes of digital information on such digital media disks. As a result, digital media disks are commonly used for distributing digital audio and video. Very large numbers of digital media disks have been, and continue to be, distributed and sold throughout the world. The digital information stored on the digital media disks can be played using media players, such as a computing device, a CD player, a DVD player, a high definition DVD (HD DVD) player, a BluRay disk player, and so on. Over time, or even initially, the low-cost media may fail or otherwise be defective so that portions of the digital information stored on the digital media disk are unreadable by the media player. These failures can interfere with use of the digital media disk.
For example, failures with respect to digital information pertaining to audio and/or video may result in skipping, stuttering, halting, or other degradation in quality. The likelihood of such failures can increase with the continued use of the digital media disk, which may lead to an accumulation of defects, such as those caused by scratches, fingerprint marks, dirt, dust, or other corruption associated with wear and tear of the digital media disk. As a result of the defects, a user may no longer be able to enjoy the content of the digital media disk.
Conventional digital media disks may contain mechanisms for a modest degree of error correction, e.g. via error correcting codes or other redundancy built in to the digital media disk. In practice, the amount of damage often exceeds the recovery capabilities of the digital media disks. These errors interfere with use of the digital media disks during audio or video playback, with annoying clicks, freezing and “jumping” caused by repeated re-reading of data and skipping of data that cannot be read. The resulting behavior is extremely undesirable and annoying for users. These errors may occur more frequently when a digital media disk is heavily used, such as in libraries or rental services, although errors can occur even in brand new digital media disks due to small manufacturing defects or media player device limitations, which interact with media properties.